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A 65mm bat , a wizard on wicket and 100 in 22 balls.https://jaykalp.wordpress.com/2016/09/03/a-65mm-bat-a-wizard-on-wicket-and-100-in-22-balls/
https://jaykalp.wordpress.com/2016/09/03/a-65mm-bat-a-wizard-on-wicket-and-100-in-22-balls/#respondSat, 03 Sep 2016 20:00:46 +0000http://jaykalp.wordpress.com/?p=108In a day and age when batsmen constantly threaten the boundaries of unbelievable when it comes to scoring, it is quite natural to reminisce about the exploits of one Donald Bradman. Almost 85 years ago , when pitches were still uncovered and batsmen still had thin bats and minimal protection, in a cold November afternoon in 1931, on a field with long boundaries, Don Bradman administered a whipping that were to become a folklore. By November 1931, Don Bradman had registered 5 double centuries including a triple – 309 of which were hammered in a single day. So, even though it was just a minor fixture, a feat like this caused quite a few heads to turn ; not in sheer disbelief but in amazement of the extraordinary talent at display.

When I visited the Bradman Museum in Bowral last year, I had had the privilege of seeing the bat that Bradman used during THAT innings. Naturally, I was fascinated and wanted to know more. This 30 page book, “Bradman at Blackheath” was my best bet to get a credible account of that innings but laying my hands on one of these was difficult since only 200 copies were ever published. The search has come to fruition after more than an year as I finally have this book in my hands and it is everything that I hoped it would be. And more.

As evident from the title, this book is a memory of that game at Blackheath when The Don made 100 off just 22 deliveries and more than 250 in less than 2.5 hours.

The circumstances surrounding that innings were interesting to say the least. It was a new malthoid wicket which Bradman inaugurated the morning of the match. Bradman, a 23 year old and already a big crowd puller was also a regular at minor fixtures in and around NSW. The opposition, Lithgow Pottery XII had in their ranks, Bill Black who had bowled Bradman a few weeks earlier in a similar minor fixture and had not stopped gloating about it since. He was to go for 62 from his only 2 overs of the match. The other bowler to bear the brunt of that onslaught was Harold Baker who saw 40 runs scored from one of his over. With Wendell Bill scoring two from two during those 24 balls, Bradman had achieved the unbelievable. Afterwards, at the Civic Reception, he heard the Lithgow opener, Bob Nicholson sing and he promptly hired him to sing at his wedding a few months later.

There are quite a few anecdotes like this about the match and the innings itself. That this book is a result of the efforts of Irene McKilligan , whose father played in that match alongside Bradman , and Richard Cardwell’s close relationship with Wendell Bill, the non striker when Bradman made all those runs, anecdotes and pictures that go with them were expected.

Also instructive was an excerpt from the condition report prepared in 2007, when the bat made its way to the Bradman Museum. The width of the bat is measured to be 65mm. This measurement is 2 to 3 centimeters below the bats that modern batsmen use. To show the contrast (and possibly, the imbalance between the bat and the ball too) one of Dave Warner’s bat is displayed alongside Bradman’s bat in the Bradman Museum. While the former looks and acts like a potent weapon of destruction, the latter is quite deceptive in appearance but has done more damage than the former would have ever hoped to do. No doubt, the modern batsmen would touch new heights in the years to come ,but batsmanship is and should be more about the batsman and less about the bat.

]]>https://jaykalp.wordpress.com/2016/09/03/a-65mm-bat-a-wizard-on-wicket-and-100-in-22-balls/feed/0bradman_at_blackheath_200x300jaykalpReading Sujit Mukherjee : The romance and whatnothttps://jaykalp.wordpress.com/2016/05/01/reading-sujit-mukherjee-the-romance-and-whatnot/
https://jaykalp.wordpress.com/2016/05/01/reading-sujit-mukherjee-the-romance-and-whatnot/#respondSun, 01 May 2016 07:56:31 +0000http://jaykalp.wordpress.com/?p=25In this age of omnipresent television, we might one day forget that there ever was a time when cricket was not telecast live-even on radio. Indeed, even the match reports were published a few days after the matches had ended and a whole lot of people were devoid of the pure pleasures of watching a cricket match.For a majority of the populace, statistics was the only connection to the game and the players. The onus of giving the general masses the feeling of watching cricket from the stands fell squarely on the writers. Sir Neville Cardus was magnificent in that regard and a few pages into the book,”The Romance of Indian Cricket”, you realize that the Late Mr. Sujit Mukherjee might as well be called the “Cardus of India”.

He takes a few of the cricketing heroes of the then nascent Indian Test cricket scene and presents brief profiles on each one of them. Reading about the lethal Nissar-Amar combination or the Hazare-Merchant friendly rivalry is almost as good as watching them – so stimulating is the vivid imagery that he presents. He doesn’t dwell much on the statistics from the game but on the aesthetics of the game. And therein lies this book’s greatest strength. In eleven short, crisp essays, Mr. Mukherjee presents to the world some of the most eminent Indian cricketers from the then 30 years young Indian Test Cricket history, who would have otherwise been known only by their numbers. Visualizing how someone like Mushtaq Ali or Lala Amarnath made their runs or how Vinoo Mankad took all those wickets is much more entertaining and appetizing than just staring at the numbers.

That he focuses just on Test players means that a majority of brilliant Indian cricketers from the late 1890s to the early 1930s do not find a place here. And the fact that very few writers – of note or otherwise, have written on Indian Cricket extensively, means that those 40 years would most probably exist almost exclusively in the newspapers of that era, that is, if those news papers themselves exist. A whole era would exist in near total obscurity – an implication that puts the importance of this book in perspective.

Although he has written for just a little over 150 pages, Mr. Mukherjee has given a glimpse of cricket in the era of communal, franchise cricket of the Quadrangulars and Pentagulars ; making the recounting of early years of Ranji Trophy and Test Cricket in India just a bonus. This recollection of history makes the book invaluable and justifies the exorbitant price that I paid ,at least at the time of writing, for the only copy in circulation. It’s a shame that this book is now out of print. The historical value notwithstanding, the lucid writing in itself would have been a lesson for any budding writer. If nothing else, Sujit Mukherjee proves that the romance of cricket lies not in the numbers in a statistician’s workbook but on the hallowed grounds within the ropes, where those numbers are written with sweat and blood.

]]>https://jaykalp.wordpress.com/2016/05/01/reading-sujit-mukherjee-the-romance-and-whatnot/feed/0419A1FG9cDL._SX252_BO1,204,203,200_jaykalp“Test Cricket: The unofficial biography”: An unofficial reviewhttps://jaykalp.wordpress.com/2016/03/16/test-cricket-the-unofficial-biography-an-unofficial-review/
https://jaykalp.wordpress.com/2016/03/16/test-cricket-the-unofficial-biography-an-unofficial-review/#respondWed, 16 Mar 2016 05:22:06 +0000http://jaykalp.wordpress.com/?p=20In “Test Cricket: The unofficial biography”, Jarrod Kimber has delivered us a book that was long overdue and quite frankly, necessary in the times when cricket’s premiere format is under threat. This book not only deals with the issues that were rampant in the days gone by but also with the stories of how ultimately cricket came out on top.

The opening and closing chapters deal with the loss of Phil Hughes and in his words, urge you to dig in and get through to tea as if saying that whatever be the loss, we must endure, cricket must endure. And in between these two chapters, Jarrod Kimber turns back clocks to the 1700s when cricket was just invented to take us through the ups and downs that cricket has seen. He covers every pivotal moment in cricket’s past. From the first time ever that the round arm deliveries were bowled to the first ever use of protection gears; from the first ever international match to the first ever Test match; from the creation of MCC to the foundation of ICC; from the rise of the English and the Australian teams to the entry of South Africa; from the inculcation of cricket in the commonwealth nations to the loss of Argentina because it wasn’t one. It’s all in here.

Jarrod Kimber deals in detail with the prejudices prevalent in cricket as recently as 1990s. He explains how the class divide reared its head when the Gentlemen were playing the Players. He explains how Jack Hobbs became Jack Hobbs despite that. He laments the fact that the aboriginal Australians like Eddie Gilbert and Jack Marsh were lost because of their birth. But then he rejoices in successes of Learie Constantines and George Headleys as well. He is amused by the fact that in the first ever test series between Australia and an all-black West Indies, the trophy was named after Sir Frank Worrel, the then captain of West Indies. Australia hadn’t yet started counting aboriginals in their census when after conceding the series, Sir Frank Worrel gave away the eponymous trophy to Sir Richie Benaud. He recounts the horrors of the D’Oliviera Affair and the fallout of the rebel tours to South Africa in the apartheid era. The neglect that the Women’s cricket teams faced even in the 21st century is explored too and though the situation has marginally improved, there is just so much more that needs to be done. The plight of the Associates and Affiliates is dealt with as well. The only things I believe are missing are the discriminations based on caste, race and religion widespread in the pre independence, undivided India and erstwhile Ceylone. The Bombay Quadrangular could have been dealt with in a little more detail in this regard. The hardships faced by Palwankar Baloo and the likes, and the plight of cricketers from Jaffna would have only added to the harrowing narrative.

I’m not implying that the book is all gloom. Jarrod Kimber celebrates the fact that cricket ultimately overcame all these social and political divides. He celebrates England’s rise as the father of cricket and Australians sheer dominance in 1948 and then again almost four decades later. He celebrates New Zealand’s series win in 1969 that was 40 years in the making. He celebrates the Carribean kings who ruled for nearly two decades. He celebrates the World Cup victories of India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. He celebrates Kerry Packer and WSC. He celebrates the inclusion of Kenya, Zimbabwe, Bangladesh and Afghanistan. He celebrates everything until the trifecta of Clarke, Srinivasan and Sutherland held cricket at ransom and divided the cricketing nations into haves and have-nots. It is a divide that cricket is yet to overcome.

Jarrod Kimber gives you anecdotes after anecdotes. He isn’t giving a history lesson. He is just recounting the moments when just for those fleeting moments cricket was more than just a game; the moments that made cricket. Be it the spell in 1882 in which Fred Spofforth unleashed hell on England to deliver The Ashes as a contest to us or that time in 1932 when Ponsford traded countless body bruises for 83 runs in an act of defiance ,and righteousness of being in the only team playing cricket. Be it Kapil’s catch in 1983 or Imran’s speech to his team in 1992 or Aravinda DeSilva’s brilliance in 1996, cricket ceased to be just a game in those moments and cricketers ceased to be mere mortals. It became a nation’s retribution at times and hope at others as the cricketers became heroes. In showing that such moments were interspersed with the social issues of those times, Jarrod Kimber is showing that cricket was and will always be a great unifying force. By asserting that cricket could have avoided many of these issues from creeping into the establishment, he is also showing Cricket administrators the mirror.

He has covered so much in barely 300 pages and yet it feels like another 300 could have been written. While this shows how rich the cricket history is, it also shows how good a writer Jarrod Kimber is. With his inimitable writing style, he forces you to read chapter after chapter after chapter. There is never a dour chapter. Each one is just as captivating as the last one.

I recently saw the documentary,” Death of a Gentleman” that he co-produced with Sam Collins. In that documentary, he investigates, condemns and then resigns himself to the deplorable state of Test Cricket. He started work on this book when he was still making that documentary. All the research he must have done for that documentary finds its way into this book. The words have come straight from the heart. Though he is humorous , he paints a gloomy picture of the future but at the same time, he instills hope by pointing out the numerous hurdles Cricket has overcome.

Jarrod Kimber is not an artist with words. He would never claim that. The world might never disagree. He is just a man passionate about cricket. This book is a work of passion above anything else. It is purely coincidental that this is a work of art as well. Jarrod Kimber might never agree. The world just might disagree yet.

]]>https://jaykalp.wordpress.com/2016/03/16/test-cricket-the-unofficial-biography-an-unofficial-review/feed/0jaykalpThe Cricket Match by Hugh de Selincourt: A Book Review and Other Random Thoughtshttps://jaykalp.wordpress.com/2015/09/15/the-cricket-match-by-hugh-de-selincourt-a-book-review-and-other-random-thoughts/
https://jaykalp.wordpress.com/2015/09/15/the-cricket-match-by-hugh-de-selincourt-a-book-review-and-other-random-thoughts/#respondTue, 15 Sep 2015 01:58:40 +0000http://jaykalp.wordpress.com/?p=15Before I even begin, I would like to offer my apologies for such a long,laborious post and a pretentious one at that. I love cricket much like everyone else. In fact, somewhere in the book, Mr.Selincourt comments that some are so serious about the sport that you’d say it was a religion and I could genuinely identify with the thought. But the length of this review can be attributed to the joys of reading and wild imagination as well. You see, something other than the story caught my attention and it was just hard to let go of it. I had to put it down somewhere. So, before I begin with my review, I would dedicate some space to that “something”. Again, this might not be the best place for a post like this but indulge me here for I couldn’t think of a place better than this either.

I have never been a fan of pre-owned books. Weird as it may sound, I am one of those who like that new book smell. So, I surprised myself when I picked up a pre-owned copy of this book. The book’s exteriors and interiors are in a dilapidated state. The pages are slowly turning yellow. The hard cover, which I imagine, used to be white has taken a brownish hue. And the very first page is littered with signatures. I presume everyone who read or even owned this book signed it as well. And then, looking at that first page, it occured to me. The book itself had a story to tell; separate from the one the author had.

Travelling through eight decades, for it is a 1935 edition; it must have changed so many bookshelves. It must have pleasured so many individuals. It must have been at least a very small part of each of their lives. And I could not help but wonder what each person’s life was like. I started guessing based on the signatures that I saw. It wasn’t long before I could almost see every individual reading this book. That one signature which was so bold that it might as well have been embossed on the page must have been of an English nobleman. Confident, arrogant but learned nonetheless. He might have played back in his days; not too well to be a constant fixture in his team but well enough to know the nuances of the game and critique other players at every available opportunity. He must have read this book in his study after a long day at work, while smoking cigars and enjoying ciders. To him, his signature mustn’t have been just an affirmation of the act of reading but an approval of the quality of literature itself.

This other signature looked like it was hastily done. He must have been a student. He must have picked this book up from a library while looking for books on engineering, or botany, or literature. He must have read this in his down time, just to refresh himself. May be, he even played for his varsity’s team, imitating the likes of WG Grace and Ranjitsinhji, or Jack Hobbs, or may be Sir Don himself. He mustn’t have paid much attention to the book itself. He must have missed how the first page had so many signatures. In fact, he must have noticed that first page while returning it to the library and signed it with the librarian’s pen, much as an afterthought. I let my thoughts swirl and concoct stories, associating them with each signature for quite some time and come to think of it, that first page was one of the finest novels I have ever read. The pleasures of reading a pre-owned book are immense. Anyway, for the rest of this piece, I’ll concentrate on the story that Mr. Hugh de Selincourt tells.

This book, I am told, is one of the best pieces of fictional work on Cricket, coinciding as it did with the times of Neville Cardus. I couldn’t help but wonder how cricket literature has evolved through generations. From Mr.Selincourt’s and Cardus’s fictional musings to CLR James’ and David Firth’s social commentary to Ramachandra Guha’s and Boria Mazumdar’s historical accounts to Peter Roebuck’s and Gideon Haigh’s relevant modern satires, cricket literature has indeed come a long way. And it is not to say that you wouldn’t connect with the subject matter.

The plot is about a cricket match between the villages of Tillingfold and Raveley. The players, or, if you will, the gentlemen amateurs of Tillingfold play the hosts and are the protagonists here. After he briefly explains the setting of the match, Mr.Selincourt then goes about explaining some of the Tillingfold players’ mornings and afternoons just before the game in the evening. He explains how every player comes from different socioeconomic strata. He goes on to explain the basis for team selection. Some are there because of talents, some because of their social standing and yet some because of their zeal. He explains the players’ respective personalities. By this point, you begin to see yourself in the characters. Some would identify with the enthusiastic Horace, some with aggressive Hunter, some with respectable John McLeod and some with talented Sid Smith.

It is as if the way we form a team (of amateurs) hasn’t changed since the beginning of cricket, or for that matter, any team sport. Neither have the anticipations and apprehensions that grip each player before the game. Everyone hopes for a good game; a game in which one performs heroically; a game which ends with him being on the victorious side. But, reality is seldom this ideal. For, in a game, you would have people who would mess up. Someone would bowl a bad over, or drop a catch or get out cheaply. Not everyone would be a hero. And no one wants to be that guy. Everyone fears being that guy. These hopes and fears, these human emotions haven’t changed and you would definitely identify with these. Mr.Selincourt remarks that in every match, every team has two and only two types of people-the sportsmen and the others. We never want to be “the others”. We want to be the sportsmen and this is true of every team setting. You always want to be in the thick of the things and perform well. You never want to be the also rans. And you do not have to be a cricket fan to identify with this emotion.

But once the game begins, we leave all these hopes and fears behind. We abandon our problems and social statuses. Out there on the field, even in the pavilion, we are just players. No more, no less. And it suddenly becomes just about the next ball, the next moment. People of a generation gone by felt the same way, we feel the same way and the generations to come would think and feel the same. It is no surprise that the Tillingfold’s players have the same emotions and Mr.Selincourt has indeed portrayed this quite well. So much so that you are transported to that ground, practicing and playing with the players, echoing their every emotion and miming their every move.

Through out the text, Mr. Selincourt reminds everyone how sports can be a great unifier. The team that Tillingfold fielded had a 50 year old man in John McLeod and a 15 year old kid in Horace and they bat together as if they are colleagues. When on the wicket together, Mr. McLeod isn’t patronising and Horace isn’t childish. There is Sid Smith who is a labourer ,but on the cricket field, he is just another man among men, free and high spirited. He is confident and sprightly on the field for he knows that cricket is what he is good at and respected for. Mr. Selincourt presents a notion of two Sids, one on the field and the other off it. Off the field, he is a sub ordinate of others but on the field, he is an equal sometimes even a leader of men. His deeds on the field keep him going off the field. There is Mr. Waite, called upon from a different village for this match and is unknown to the whole team. He comes off as a confident cricekter to some and an irritating character to others. But, no one voices concerns. Everyone is welcoming of the man despite their respective perceptions of him.There is Mr. Hunter, forever unhappy with how the Cricket Club is run, but on the field, he is one with the team. All the players have some or the other personal differences but on the field, they are a team with one and only one motive – to win. And isn’t it how every team is supposed to be? It is such thoughts of team spirit and sportsmanship that make these lines echo with you, “The game is greater than the players of the game. And the ship is greater than the crew”.

The narrative is free flowing and the language used is easy. At times, its almost as if you are reading the transcript of a commentary. It reminds you of a far simpler times. Times when you had no worries. All the worries belonged outside those boundary ropes. Inside those hallowed ropes, you were just another player, free from social conventions and titles. Ironically, inside those ropes you were free. If you have ever loved or played a team sport, you will relate to this book for sure. And to all the Cricket lovers, do read this book. It would make you fall in love with cricket all over again. My word, it would delight you to no end. And if you come across a battered 1935 hard cover edition, the first page filled with signatures, after reading the book, sign and forward it. You might just be fuelling someone’s imaginations.